An extensive literature has covered the issue how firms have to respond to changes market, in which Porter (1985, 1990) has probably been the most cited reference. Still a point of reference is in Porter’s Book “Competitive Strategy”, Annex B How to Conduct an Industry Analysis (1985). The shift in scientific paradigms came with Hamel and Prahalad’s Article in the Harvard Business Review (1996) “Competing for the Future”. Here they proposed that strategy analysis has to shift to examine not only the market but also the firm-internal capabilities and competencies. Jay Barney (2002) in his book “Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage” proposed a synthesis of both streams of thought. However, even these authors have been short with respect to one interesting question which is: what are the sources of innovation and imitation in an industry which actually govern particular strategy choices of companies. And maybe even more interesting: what can we learn from other companies? There are different ways to examine industries and companies depending on the particular research question ask in the analysis. For the mobile telecommunication industry a good research question could be: how and why do need firms in the mobile telecommunication industry inter-firm linkages and what is the role of the government to foster the growth of these firms?(see attachment sadowski_sbe1.pdf)
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